Paul McKenna’s essential self-help guide to stop your lockdown food cravings

Like millions around the globe stuck at home, the hypnotist had fallen into erratic eating patterns.

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In a bid to stop him, his wife Kate taped a large question mark to the fridge door — and then he used his own techniques on himself to stop the cycle of scoffing.

Today, in the second part of his series on dealing with lockdown blues, Paul draws on his experience of overeating to tell Sun on Sunday readers how to stop fridge raiding.

Paul said: “Now my wife has put a question mark on the fridge, I ask myself, ‘Am I hungry or do I just want to change how I feel?’

“If I go, ‘No I’m not hungry, I’m here because I’m bored or anxious’, then I use one of my techniques to change my feelings.

“Millions of people have been raiding the fridge in lockdown. It is a form of self-medication and has nothing to do with physical hunger.

“Because everything is upside down, people are experiencing high levels of stress, frustration and anxiety and that is causing them to want to change their feelings by a very easy means — food.

“It’s emotional eating. All the decisions about what you eat or drink take place in the mind and the mind is like a computer. I will help you reprogramme it to beat it.

“And the first step is putting a question mark on your fridge door.”

SCOFFING IN LOCKDOWN

During the pandemic, 35 per cent of us have eaten more food or less healthy grub than normal, and 49 per cent of us have felt more anxious or stressed, a survey by King’s College London has found. Even Hollywood actress Naomi Watts posted an Instagram picture of herself holding a huge slice of cake, captioned: “EAT your feelings.”

Today, Paul reveals his techniques to conquer the phenomenon, which he also covers in his podcast.

Paul said: “Everyone changes their feelings by external means — drinking, drug taking, gambling, sex, shopping, TV and food — the world’s drug of choice, particularly sugar.

“But there is a key difference between physical and emotional hunger. The former comes on gradually, a feeling we are peckish. Emotional hunger is, ‘I am bored, frustrated, anxious . . . chocolate!’

“If you eat based on emotional hunger, your body will never feel satisfied by food. But you can beat it — and stop yourself putting on weight.”

Here are Paul’s top tips to keep your weight down in lockdown . . .

• Download Paul McKenna’s new FREE Positivity Podcast to help you stop comfort eating, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Stop raids for grub

IF you are tempted to eat a snack, stop and ask yourself: “Am I really hungry or do I just want to change the way I feel?”

If you want to change your feelings, no amount of food will work as well as the following technique.

1. Clarify the emotion that you are finding uncomfortable. Don’t be distracted by thinking about why you are feeling it – just focus on the feeling itself.
2. Ask yourself what the feeling is about. What message does it have for you? If you’re not sure, it’s OK to guess.
3. Whatever the message, let your unconscious mind know you’ve received it. If there is any action to be taken, promise yourself you will take it ASAP.

You will know you’ve correctly identified the emotion and its message when the uncomfortable feeling begins to dissolve into the background and your natural sense of ease returns.

Vital to eat consciously

MY final step going forward is whatever you do, make sure you eat CONSCIOUSLY – eat SLOWLY and enjoy every mouthful.

This is a mind-aerobics process and if you practise, it will become your natural default setting. I cannot emphasise this enough.

Put the knife and fork down while you are chewing your food and really enjoy it – savour the taste as you thoroughly chew each mouthful at least 20 times.

If all you did for the next two weeks was to slow your eating speed down, you would find it easy to leave food on your plate.

Also, eating consciously means focusing on the food and nothing else. Overwhelming research shows that if you eat and watch TV or while reading, you eat more, so focus on the food and nothing else.

Hypnotist busts those lockdown food cravings

OFTEN with emotional eating, people will find themselves out of control about one particular food – whether that is chocolate, crisps or whatever.

The following technique will help you regain control around what food is your trigger.

You may have seen me demonstrate the craving-buster technique on TV where I help someone who is addicted to, for example, chocolate.

We do a simple thought experiment and they never crave it again. They are left with the feeling that they can take it or leave it. That, to me, is freedom.

So, I’d like you to think of a food that you are out of control around, and on a scale of one to ten, rate your craving, with one being the lowest and ten the highest.

This is important, because after we’ve done this process, we want to know how much it is reduced. We are going to get your brain to create the feeling of compulsion for that particular food which you are out of control around, and then get you to think about a food that revolts you.

So when you think of your compulsion food at the same time as your revulsion food, one will cancel out the other.

You will be free to choose if you want to eat it or not.

This will make you feel mildly uncomfortable for a few moments as you need to get a very strong feeling of revulsion to cancel out the compulsion.

1. Think of a food that absolutely revolts you. Just thinking about it will give you a slightly nauseous feeling.
2. Now, I need you to imagine as vividly as possible eating that food – taste it, feel the texture in your mouth and the awful feeling of swallowing it, again and again.
3. Keep doing this again and again until you feel really revolted.
4. Imagine adding some of the food you feel out of control around, with the food you feel revolted by. Mix the taste and texture as you chew and taste them together. If it doesn’t feel disgusting, you need to pick a revolting food that’s worse.

5. Now, imagine adding some hair to the food you used to feel compulsive about and the food you feel revolted by. Taste how they feel together and the texture in your mouth with all those hairs, and really chew them before you try to swallow them.
6. Think about the food you felt out of control around and rate your desire on a scale of one to ten. It should be significantly lower. If not, you need to make yourself feel much more revolted and only then begin to add in the food that you liked.
7. When you can think about the food you were out of control around and can take it or leave it, you are back in control.

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